By: Ron Wince, President and CEO, Guidon Performance Solutions – Posted in HealthNewsDigest.com
The healthcare system in America is not perfect – watch the news, go online or talk to anyone on the streets and it’s clear that most people are not satisfied with the quality or cost of their care. Payers and providers across the country are in constant fear of mergers, acquisitions or even government takeover. Despite these looming threats to survival, hospitals and other health care organizations still have some control and can make the decision now to mobilize tangible modifications to improve efficiency, communication and in turn, patient outcomes. Leaders in healthcare know that they must do something…but how to do it may remain a mysterious but not orphan disease.

By: Ron Wince, President and CEO, Guidon Performance Solutions – Posted in Becker's Hospital Review
In an era of unexpected and disruptive forces, healthcare leaders are finding it increasingly challenging to keep the pace of change inside their organization on par with the pace of change outside. Many are already deep into reengineering/improvement methodologies, embracing technology solutions and facing the realities of rapidly declining reimbursement rates. But often — in the messiness of making change — those in leadership roles can lose the big picture and miss the best opportunities for making a lasting impact.

By: Michael Frank, Chief Executive Officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield Montana – Posted in Payers and Providers
No matter the outcome of the Affordable Care Act, the long-term picture for payers remains uncertain. Even if all the ACA provisions are enforced by the Supreme Court, there are still many issues to sort out. If some of the provisions are struck down, then other issues will be encountered. In an unpredictable business environment, Blue Cross Blue Shield Montana decided to give itself a physical and make process improvements to control what we could control. Over the past two years, we have reduced costs in a number of critical operational areas at the same time that we made it easier and faster for customers to do business with us.

By: Ron Wince, President and CEO, Guidon Performance Solutions – Posted in PM360online.com
When 300 healthcare industry leaders take a full day out of their schedules to attend a virtual conference addressing “Healthcare’s Era of Disruption,” you know they’re losing sleep. The dark circles under the eyes of today’s healthcare managers are a direct result of the lack of visibility of what lies ahead and the onslaught of ambiguity, regulatory complexity, and financial pressures. The rate of change is heart-stopping and leaders are waking up to the reality that they can’t go it alone. The only comforting factor for most is the recognition that we’re all in it together.

By: Debra Wood, RN, contributor, AMN Healthcare
With healthcare reimbursement becoming tighter and patients expecting more from their providers, hospitals and other health systems are seeking ways to change processes and become more efficient.

By: Ron Wince, President and CEO, Guidon Performance Solutions – Posted in Executive Insight
The specter of wholesale disruption in healthcare is no longer a storm cloud gathering on a distant horizon. That swirl is directly overhead and hospitals and other providers are struggling to cope with gale force winds that may threaten some institutions very survival.

By: Ron Wince, President and CEO, Guidon Performance Solutions – Posted in Becker's Hospital Review
Ask any healthcare leader to name something that isn’t changing in their world these days, and they’d be hard pressed to come up with an answer. Technologies are evolving so quickly that equipment and IT infrastructure can be nearly out of date before they are fully functional. Brick-and-mortar healthcare delivery is increasingly threatened by breakthroughs in virtual medicine. Major regulatory changes are underway involving reimbursement, accountability and quality. The very structure of the industry — particularly for care providers — is shifting daily as more and more  players merge, consolidate and innovate.

By: Ron Wince, President and CEO, Guidon Performance Solutions – Posted in Western Pennsylvania Hospital News
New healthcare regulation such as the passage of the health insurance exchange, the looming effect of the healthcare reform bill, and the sky rocketing costs of healthcare are among just some of the endless issues that Pennsylvania hospitals are up against.

By: Sabrina Rodak, Becker's Hospital Review
The cost and revenue associated with operating rooms, as well as its central role in attracting physicians, makes leadership of this department critical for the overall performance of a hospital. An OR leader requires a broad set of skills, ranging from communication with a variety of stakeholders to business acumen. Ron Wince, CEO of management consulting firm Guidon Performance Solutions, describes four key skills that OR leaders need to drive the department and organization’s success.

By: Ron Wince, President and CEO, Guidon Performance Solutions – Posted in Executive Insight/Advance Web Blog
Five New Year’s resolutions for every hospital in 2012 include creating ecosystems/cultures of improvement, adopting a more holistic view, improving the patient experience, embracing IT, and seek innovation.

By: Debra Wood, RN, contributor, AMN Healthcare, Inc.
Many patients come into the hospital after hours in critical condition, and others often “take a turn for the worse” during the overnight hours when hospitals are, typically, less well staffed with experienced nurses and physicians. But as health systems adapt to changing patient expectations and robust demands for patient safety, how they deal with night coverage is starting to change.

Guest Post By: Ron Wince, President and CEO, Guidon Performance Solutions – Posted in Fierce HealthFinance
Large and small healthcare systems across the country are facing a tidal wave of management and cost pressures–a confluence of new regulations, oversight, quality requirements–that are about to get even more complex. The impending changes in reimbursement, regulations, and closer scrutiny of patient outcomes are just the tip of the iceberg.

By: Ron Wince, President and CEO, Guidon Performance Solutions – Posted in Payers & Providers
Perhaps no state in the country has done as much for holistic medicine as California. But it’s time to apply the concept of holistic—dealing with entire systems as a whole, not individual parts—to healthcare management as well as medicine.

California’s healthcare systems are facing the same tidal wave of pressures found in other states - a confluence of new regulations, oversight, cost and quality requirements—that is about to get even more complex. The impending changes in reimbursement, regulations, and closer scrutiny of patient outcomes are just the tip of the iceberg.

By: James Ritchie, Staff Reporter, Business Courier
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and similar institutions nationwide, are facing an economic environment where nothing is sacred – not even funding for pediatric hospitals.

With much of their revenue coming from state and federal sources, children’s hospitals serve as a case study of governments’ ineffectiveness at controlling medical costs, according to a recent report by the nonprofit Kaiser Health News. Frequently enjoying nonprofit status and limited local competition, the business is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar building boom nationwide, with many hospitals, including Cincinnati Children’s, earning millions in profits.

By: Robert Celaschi, Correspondent – Sacramento Business Journal
New rules shorten hours for first-year residents. Doctors at the region’s teaching hospitals are keeping a close eye on the clock. On July 1, new rules went into effect restricting the number of hours worked by medical residents. They are refinements of rules introduced in 2003 by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. While the limits give residents more time off, hospitals have to find ways to cover those hours and still make sure residents get full training.

By: Ron Wince, Guidon Performance Solutions (Case In Point)
As nearly 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 each day, the strain on America’s healthcare services will continue to grow. An increasing number of age-related ailments will require treatment in our hospitals, and as boomers retire there will be a widening of the gap in nurse and primary care staffing.

By: Ron Wince, Guidon Performance Solutions (Published in Physicians News Digest)
Although Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have been discussed for years, health care reform has put them in the spotlight. Now, health care leaders are trying to determine the best way to move forward and transition to this new model of care. While the idea behind ACOs is to get the provider and payer chain working together to provide better-coordinated, more seamless care, the various definitions of an ACO are widely varied. From the perspective of a Medicare/Medicaid patient, there is a major attraction to the current perception of ACOs. In principle, patients should have a reasonable expectation of higher quality care delivered at a lower cost if they choose a provider enrolled in an ACO.

By: Ron Wince, Guidon Performance Solutions (Published in Executive Insight)
ACOs have the potential to improve quality while reducing costs, and business intelligence will be important to the success. With the new healthcare reform legislation, healthcare leaders are under fire to determine the best way to move forward and transition to an Accountable Care Organization (ACO). ACOs were developed a few years ago to coordinate the provider and payer chain so care is better coordinated and more seamless. While there are a few outlined requirements (i.e., must serve a minimum of 5,000 patients; consent to be part of an ACO for at least 3 years; follow a one-sided or two-sided risk model; measure and report more than 65 metrics), the exact model of an ACO has yet to be defined.

By: Molly Gamble, Becker's Hospital Review
5 transaction trends in ACO development which include information about mergers, culture, size and scope, small rural providers, and technology plan.

By: John DeGaspari, Jennifer Prestigiacomo, and Mark Hagland, Healthcare Informatics
Challenges surrounding integration, quality measures to unfold. Healthcare CIOs and industry experts expressed a variety of views following the March 31 release of the proposed rule for the development of accountable care organizations (ACOs) under federal healthcare reform.

By: Ron Wince, Guidon Performance Solutions (Published in Executive Insight)
Healthcare leaders must recognize shifting realities and take the necessary steps to address the changes. Some 3 million baby boomers became Medicare eligible this year alone. Efficient and fair Medicare reimbursement is becoming an even greater challenge. Add to that the uncertainty of the full impact of healthcare reform, and it may seem as though hospitals and healthcare facilities are staring into the perfect storm.

By: Debra Wood, AMN Healthcare, Inc.
Aiming to improve Medicare patient outcomes while reducing unnecessary costs, the Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, includes incentives, such as encouraging creation of accountable care organizations (ACOs), to enhance quality and increase value.

By: Reba Kieke, Managed Care Outlook
The term “far reaching” has been used more than a few times to describe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as health care reform. PPACA takes aim at some of the hardest topics in health care, including preexisting conditions, questionable insurance practices, barriers to care, fines and penalties for lack of coverage, accountable care organizations — and everything in between.

By: Jaimie Oh, Becker's Hospital Review
The baby boomer generation started turning 65 years old this January, which means an expected 2.8 million boomers will qualify for Medicare in 2011 alone. Hospitals must remain on guard for the implications stemming from an exploding baby boomer population. Here, Ron Wince, president and CEO of Guidon Performance Solutions, a performance management company, shares six thoughts on what concerns hospitals should have and solutions for addressing those concerns.

By: Jennifer C. Smith-Parker (Washington, DC), Pharmawire
Large insurance companies such as WellPoint and Cigna, as well as large hospital chains, are expected to actively partner with each other and with nursing homes and physician groups in order to create “medical homes” in 2011 and beyond, healthcare experts told Pharmawire.

By: Molly Gamble, Becker’s Hospital Review
Although many hospitals sing the praises of lean management, the trendy business philosophy still leaves room for error, particularly if implemented as a half-baked improvement project for certain areas of business. By keeping an eye on the following four problem areas, hospitals can continue to reap lean’s benefits and prevent it from becoming another flavor-of-the-month to hospital administrators, physicians and staff.

By: Ron Wince, Guidon Performance Solutions (published in Western Pennsylvania Hospital News)
America’s health system is on the brink of significant transformation. Due to the layered complexity of the health care reform legislation, nearly every participant in the health system will be affected, including providers, patients, payers and government agencies.

By: Ron Wince, Guidon Performance Solutions (published in FacilityCare)
The American health system is on the cusp of radical change – much of which will last for decades.  Every aspect of the health care system as we know it will be impacted as patients, providers, payers and government agencies grapple with the complexity of health reform, from reimbursement and payment reform for payers to mandates on measurement and reporting of care outcomes for providers.  Yet one of the most significant changes on the horizon for care providers is the head-long race underway to adopt Electronic Medical Records (EMRs).

By: Jennifer C. Smith-Parker (Washington, DC) and Deborah Balshem (Florida), Pharmawire
Hospital chains such as Tenet Healthcare, Community Health Systems, Health Management Associates and HCA are expected to accelerate their acquisitions of physician practices in 2011 and beyond, experts said. The impact of healthcare reform is pushing hospitals to cover their bottom lines, they added.

By Pamela Lewis Dolan, American Medical News
Under a new program, physicians and hospitals will be able to use existing IT systems or implement ones of their choosing. As Great Britain debates changes in its National Health Service, one of its first steps was to dump its plans for structuring a national health information network. The decision comes after nearly a decade of struggles to get the network up and running. The program, designed as a top-down mandate that forced physicians to adopt one of two health information technology systems chosen for them by the government, was unpopular among physicians from the start.

By Christian Borjesson, Director, Microbiology, bioMérieux Inc, Marcy l'Etoile, France
If necessity is the mother of invention, the recent surge in technological and process innovations transforming microbiology laboratories reflects the urgent need of hospital microbiologists who face dramatic increases in their workloads. Guidon CEO, Ron Wince talks about providing Lean lab assessments for customers that would help them optimize their value-added services. These assessments result in a roadmap for the microbiology laboratory with recommendations for process adjustments and re-orientation of existing equipment, staffing times and automation of various portions of the microbiology lab continuum.

By Sara Hansard, BNA Healthcare
A major issue regulators will have to grapple with in determining how to account for health insurers’ costs is what kind of health information technology should be considered medical costs. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, Pub. L. No. 111-148) requires that starting in 2011 insurers of large group plans spend at least 85 percent of the premiums they collect on expenses that are defined as clinical services and activities that improve health care quality. Insurers of small group plans and individuals must spend at least 80 percent of premiums on those expenses. Guidon CEO, Ron Wince says regulators are likely to prohibit IT costs associated with managing operations from being included in the medical loss ratio.

By Jon Ward and Alexandra Cahill, The Daily Caller
Democratic governors on Wednesday ramped up the pressure on Congress to pass a $24 billion extension of aid to states for spending on health-care assistance for the poor and elderly, with one saying that the country will slip back into recession if the money is not handed out. Guidon CEO, Ron Wince says it’s going to be a train wreck if the money doesn’t come through and many states may raise taxes instead of firing workers.

By Angela Gonzales, Phoenix Business Journal
Arizona employers are grappling with mind-numbing details of the new health care reform law, wondering how they will be impacted and what they need to do now to prepare. Guidon CEO, Ron Wince says new processes are going to be created.

By Sharon Fitzgerald, Orlando Medical News
The massive health-system reform legislation dubbed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is law, enacting the most sweeping changes in America’s health system since Medicare. Experts say now is the time providers should take a deep, cleansing breath, then jump into action with short-term strategies that could pay off down the road. Guidon CEO, Ron Wince, talks about the reform after the reform – where the big stuff is going to hit everybody. We’ve got to figure out the ‘how’ piece.

By Steve Raphael, Nightingale’s Healthcare News
As the dust settles on the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 that President Barack Obama signed into law on March 23, the winners and losers are beginning to emerge. Guidon CEO, Ron Wince, says that all-in-all, some legislation had to be passed, but It would have been better to have smaller, better pieces of legislation passed over time as he sees premiums going up.

By Eric Reinhardt, Business Journal Central New York
Some local stakeholders in the health-insurance industry, and at least one national advocate for small businesses, aren’t satisfied with the newly signed national health-care law. Guidon CEO, Ron Wince, talks about how premiums will continue rising, despite the passage of the health-care law and how the cost of healthcare is not even attacked at all in this.

By John Russell, Daniel Lee, and Shari Rudavsky, The Indianapolis Star (Indystar.com)
It’s been called a landmark restructuring of the nation’s health-care landscape. And the legislation, which runs thousands of pages, is reverberating across Indiana. The changes will affect patients, employers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, medical-device makers and many others. Guidon CEO, Ron Wince, talks about one of the first effects of the reform and how there may be confusion as customers flood insurer phone lines asking what the changes mean for them.

By Ron Wince, President/CEO, Guidon Performance Solutions
"It's not a good time. We'll get to that later." How many times have you heard or said something similar when discussing critical laboratory process improvements? "Later" often turns into never. You may be too overloaded to deploy new initiatives, but waiting only exacerbates the challenges. Processing delays and errors due to overcapacity have surely led to preventable patient deaths--a tragic yet completely unnecessary situation. It takes just days to effectively install efficiency processes utilizing LeanSigma lab tactics and less than a week to positively impact patient outcomes while reducing laboratory stress.

By Debra Wood, RN, contributor, AMA Healthcare
Hospitals aiming to work smarter and more efficiently are turning to quality assessment and improvement techniques pioneered in industry, deploying Six Sigma and Lean tools to change cultures and to improve results. CGH Medical Center contracted with Guidon Performance Solutions to help it function more efficiently. Guidon CEO, Ron Wince, encourages staff to view the healthcare experience from a different viewpoint, that of the patient, to map each step, to identify delays and redundancies and then eliminate them.

By David Yaeger, Freelance Writer, For The Record
On December 30, 2009, Health and Human Services (HHS) took another step toward defining the meaningful use of EMR systems. Following months of discussion, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a notice of proposed rulemaking, known as the meaningful use rule, that outlines the criteria for healthcare organizations to qualify for meaningful use incentive payments. Now in the public comment period, the rule could become official as early as this spring. Guidon CEO, Ron Wince, talks about how the amount of time medical providers will have to begin achieving meaningful use as a major hurdle for those who wish to qualify.

By Forbes.com
Guidon CEO, Ron Wince, talks about how President Obama should rally around the least controversial, core parts of the health reform bill and force a vote. Those would include spending on electronic health records, new rules to keep insurance companies from discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions, and initiatives to root out waste and fraud.

By Managed Care Outlook
On February 17, 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) to promote the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology (IT). Guidon CEO Ron Wince talks about how there are both positive and negative financial incentives to be compliant with the HITECH Act.

By Scott Wallask, Healthcare Life Safety Compliance
Those of you who have heard of the Lean Six Sigma approach to business operations efficiency may be surprised to know there are related applications to fire safety in healthcare facilities. Guidon CEO Ron Wince talks about how he has used Lean Six Sigma to improve physical safety, fire protection, and emergency planning in hospitals.

By Clinical Laboratory News
As of early November all indications were that the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak was still gaining steam and labs were continuing to do yeoman’s work in handling a huge spike in testing demand. To explore how labs might find some relief from the testing onslaught in a climate of tight economic circumstances and limited staff resources, CLN spoke recently with efficiency expert & CEO Ron Wince.

By Laura L. Merisalo, Healthcare Registration
Ask health care industry experts what patient access professionals can expect in 2010, and the responses may vary but they also will invariably link to service and, in turn, its relationship to nearly all other aspects of patient access responsibilities and processes. Guidon CEO Ron Wince talks about continued focus on shifting costs to patients by employer and how it is among the factors that mandate ongoing change and improvement in front-end processes.

By Dirk Dusharme, Quality Digest
In this interview with Guidon CEO Ron Wince we explore the growth of the lean, Six Sigma, and similar programs in the health care industry, and how well those programs have been implemented.

By Laura L. Merisalo, Healthcare Registration
Guidon CEO Ron Wince discusses preparing for health care reform and how it will require a cultural change in how health care delivery organizations function.